"People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow."

Yes, it's a MIB quote, but there is insight in it - as we progress we learn more and more about our environment and our view of the universe evolves. 5000 years ago we had religion because we couldn't describe trichinosis with science; we couldn't describe most of the world - so we made up religion to keep people safe and social. We still do. If your car stops running on the highway and the fuel gauge reads empty it's not an act of God that your stranded, and if you walk into the middle of a field in a thunderstorm and get hit by lightning we don't think that you have angered God and are witnessing his wrath for your wrongdoing. But you get anything that doesn't have a rational explanation - say, a plane disappearing - and *boom* there are people thinking it may just be an act of God.

Yeah, except for the fact that they all suck in comparison to a Tesla.

Really? (and I say that as a genuine question, not some snarky reply)

I always thought you could "make your own" from patent filings, you just couldn't sell/trade/traffic/commercialize it. So if I wanted to construct a swing in my backyard and use it in a sideways motion (with or without the Tarzan yell), such as currently under patent http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi... , I could do so without fear of repercussion, but I could not sell such a swing setup to others without violating the rights of the patent owner. Your definition of "use" would prevent such a project in my back yard.

I don't buy the auto analogy, mainly because the insurance companies have nothing to do with the suit, except though my contract with them for payment of an award. The only reason their lawyers get involved is because it's their money. I have a buffalo wireless router I purchased many years ago, and if the courts interpret "use" as you say, then I am in direct violation of several patents (since Buffalo, afaik, never paid for the patents they used)

OTOH, there are no natives to eat them either.

Agreed. It's a shame we can't harness it properly. (note: it takes almost as much energy - 95% as fossil fuel - to produce a working solar collection system as that system will provide over its entire life)

30 seconds?

Twice a day batch matching of buyers and sellers. You put in your offer, and if it matches at noon or 4 PM you get the trade. Offers are time-stamped and processed in order for priority.

Gross receipts tax. 2% on any receipts - profit/loss/gain - doesn't matter.

Eating rainbows and pooping butterflies, I hope. At least for a day, then, Beta will look like butterflies.

Ahhh, but you've created a PUBLIC link, not a private one. Since you don't own the copyright, you don't get to make a public link. You can make as many private links as you like, and that's arguably fair use, and you're not limited. It's like claiming that publishing a torrent link doesn't mean anything because the person who might download it could own a license.

Dropbox is not useful because of what it does - it's useful because of how it does it (seamless for a non-technical end user) and its integration into other, especially mobile, applications. Until you can roll-your-own references into commercial mobile apps, or make sharing a cloud file with a colleague with a different OS and no access to your private net available with a single click, whatever you hack together won't be Dropbox.

What it is to be human shows that we are creatures who literally NEED to kill everyone who bars our way. But this kind of indiscriminate killing doesn't play well with "society" and stability, so we make laws against it.

Arguing that you should be able to share your Miley Cyrus collection because it's human nature to share ignores all of the other human instincts to subjugate, kill, and procreate to pass on the most powerful genes of the pack - all of which we have made illegal, for much of the same reason copyright originally existed. Just because you don't agree with it doesn't make it null and void.

I have a Ford truck which likes to die when it gets cold (well, it did - I got it fixed this year). Could be on the freeway at 75MPH, could be as I'm slowing down to turn. Happened entirely randomly (except for the common factor that it could happen below 30F, but usu only once every 3-4000 operating miles).

The brakes work sufficiently to stop the vehicle, the steering is !@#$ heavy - but only "unmanageable" at very low speed. Aside from being annoying, losing the engine is rarely a "dangerous" situation. The situation of Ms. Melton's death appear to have potentially been aggravated by the ignition switch failure (which prevented the airbag from deploying), but according to TFA the ignition failure happened "during the crash" rather than just prior to her losing control. It seems rather odd that this would cause her to lose control.

Seems like an engineer who isn't up to snuff for the investigation, or simply that the error was non-obvious. Finding a solution once the problem has already been solved is a college-level event. Real engineers figure it out from scratch.

If you can't figure out the problem from the original part, perhaps the problem is beyond your engineering capabilities.

This guy wasn't some random engineer pullled off the street - he was their expert witness. Someone who should know quite a bit about what it is he's going to testify about in court. And yet he was unable to identify a flaw that resulted in the deaths of 13 people. If I were defense I'd be discrediting him pretty quickly.

So what you're saying is that when you get real engineers and designers to identify goals and work together, you get an efficient design without the need for all the VR crap. Instead, we hire whomever got a 4.0 but can't work a socket wrench and serve multiple masters so get a clusterfuck that achieves none of the goals and is so interdependent that it's nearly impossible to fix should anything go wrong.

Progress!